I know. I know. I've got to get it together. If it's March and I'm still telling you about last August, we've got issues... It's so stupid, but my biggest obstacles are my lack of time and wifi... What am I going to do when I REALLY don't have wifi...?
Anyway, I was under the impression that Maine weather was... temperate. So. When is it going to rain, and when is it going to stop being in the 90s? I will give you credit in one area: humidity is relatively low here. Only a couple of those sultry nights that make sleep impossible, rather than a couple weeks of those nights back home. Overall, though, no regrets: Maine is a vast improvement over New York. It's been a rough summer for the plants, though. Good thing there is irrigation on the farm. I'm hearing stories of folks' wells going dry, and I hear that is not something that happens in Maine. It's been dry, to say the least.
Mittens really enjoys sleeping. It's perfectly in line with her being a fat cat. Sometimes it's impossible to let sleeping cats lie.
We've still been going up to the land whenever we can. It's covered with this stuff:
It's seriously everywhere, so I hope it's something good, edible and/or useful. So far, no one can tell me what it is. Any guesses? Spoiler alert: I will tell you before month's end. I WILL find an identification.
Ever since Yoga Camp, I've been trying to embrace my newfound joy, now that I've experienced the revelation that that, of all things, is what I've been hiding. I find that, surprisingly, my circumstances are not always conducive to the expression of joy. Turns out there are some who don't like it. Anyway, I harvested this amazing carrot today. It's the coolest carrot I've ever seen! It's the kind of carrot that deserves wonder, awe and gratitude. It might even deserve an ode, but my joy was quashed before I got that far. So, with tears in my eyes, I just put it in the crate already.
But it is a seriously cool carrot.
Nate and I have been keeping in the spirit of avoiding doing nothing but work. On August 7th, which was a Sunday and our one full day off each week, we treated ourselves to a little bit of fun, rest and relaxation. Nate gets all the credit: he's the one who does all the research and planning to find these amazing places. I just tag along and smile.
This is Popham Beach. It is hands-down my new favorite beach. I love wide, sandy beaches. My only reservation with Maine beaches is that the water is still pretty darn cold, even in August. I guess those two years I lived in Florida spoiled me into preferring my salt-water swims to be in bathwater temperatures. Nonetheless, I would trade all the Florida beaches for the ones that are right here.
Popham Beach was so cool! It was about a two and a half hour drive, and in the way things work, I happened to catch a Facebook message from a Baptiste yogi asking about a Baptiste studio in Wiscasset. What?!? I didn't know there WAS a Baptiste studio in Wiscasset! I got the message about fifteen minutes before we drove through, so we stopped and took a peek. It looked beautiful, and it was about 9:15, and they had a class starting at 9:30... but, as Fate would have it, I had no yoga clothes with me, so the only good excuse not to get to the beach didn't actually manifest. It was good that we got to the beach early; it filled up so fast! Next time we will plan to get there right when it opens; in fact, as we were leaving, there was a huge line of cars waiting to get in.
People are funny; they set up shop right near the crossover from the parking area, so that part of the beach got super crowded. I don't like crowded beaches. I don't like crowded anything. But by walking on just a little bit further, we were able to find a nice spot without too many people around. So we dropped our stuff and went for a stroll.
See those mounds out there? Perfectly accessible during low tide. So we walked out and climbed around.
This is Nate standing at the edge of one of the soon-to-be islands looking out at an island that already is.
And this is me on the same eventual island, sporting an incredible farmer's tan. Speaking of which, I had a moment of panic in which I couldn't find my sunscreen in the car, but then I eventually found it and put it in my bag... without putting it on. Without putting it on at that moment... or at any other moment during the day. As a pure ginger, you'd think I would know better, but no. I got one of the wickedest sunburns I have ever had. At least it evened out my farmer's tan.
After our foray out to the islands, we went back to our little spot and enjoyed the sun, the sand and the gently lapping waves for a bit, then we took a walk in the opposite direction. About two miles away lies Fort Popham State Historic Site. Nate loves forts and military stuff, and it was pretty neat, although I wished I had put on sunscreen and shorts... wet bikini bottoms make for uncomfortable thigh rubbing. Oh well. It's not like I wasn't already red from head to toe from the sunburn.
Our roughly four-mile round trip with ample time spent exploring the fort took probably a couple hours. By the time we got back to where we had left our stuff, the tide was encroaching. Our stuff was originally probably fifty feet or so from the water's edge, but only about fifteen feet of dry land remained between my forgotten sunscreen and eternal sunburn of the spotless mind.
Seriously, what redhead forgets to put on sunscreen for a day at the beach in August?
Oh, and the eventual islands? They were islands by the time we got back. The tide moves quickly here. And it's so interesting to me, the Maine coastline. I *think* we were on the actual ocean, but parts of the beach lie at the mouth of the Kennebec River. It's so interesting that river mouths are so vast that they seem like bays, and bays seem like the ocean. And I learned recently that Bangor is actually a tidal city, though it's about an hour from the actual coast. Maine is a unique place.
Another thing that makes Maine unique (in a good way) is this awesome program run by the Maine State Prison. In Thomaston, there is this store (don't worry; it was just one of those wooden cut-outs; they didn't keep me):
in which good are marketed and sold. So the program, which can only be entered by inmates who demonstrate good behavior and other responsible habits, teaches inmates how to make woodcrafts. There are simple things, like the wine bottle holder and honey thing (You know what I mean? That round beehive-looking thing that's used to dispense honey? I'm sure it has a name.) I purchased, to exquisite and artful things, like furniture and ships in bottles. I think this is an amazing program. It gives inmates actual practical, useful, marketable skills for when they are released, as well as an opportunity to develop increased self-esteem through creative expression. I think it's also great that they are doing valuable work to help earn their keep and make productive use of their time while incarcerated. Why don't more places have such programs?
And then it was back to work. Animals are funny, and I love them, the turkeys in particular. Look at them satisfying my obsessive need for order, balance and equilibrium! So cute there in there alternating color arrangement...
So those were the very well-behaved turkeys. Good birds.
But here's what you missed:
On our way over to their enclosure, it was quite apparent that there were simply not enough turkeys inside. Why is that, you may ask? Well, there should have been eight turkeys and five ducks. But here you see six turkeys and two ducks who decided it would be far more interesting to play on the playground than to behave and do duck and turkey things in their designated duck and turkey place. There was really no excuse; they have plenty of shade under their tree. But since when do ducks and turkeys ever mind?
We are still in our summer routine... plant, harvest, wash, package, sell.
And I'm still in love with my morning routine. I will say, with all this heat and lack of rain, every single morning walk to the outhouse is a truly relaxing pleasure (well, relaxing, that is, unless I waited too long to start my walk!). Sunrise is my favorite time of day. Well, dawn, actually. I love the soft, silent quality of crepuscular light. I feel like dawn is my own secret time in which I can be alone with my thoughts while everyone else is still asleep.
Today is a day full of pretty things. Look at this handsome man whose hair is finally long enough to pull partially back!
And speaking of misbehaving animals... sometimes Mittens gets out of control and starts bullying Willow. The only solution is to put Mitten in time-out. This is what Mittens in time-out looks like:
And the sky has delivered marvelously this entire day. It started with that amazing sunrise and is ending with this glorious moonrise.
After last Sunday's play day, we decided that this Sunday, August 14th, must be a day of work. As far as the house goes, since the excavator work on July 14th, we've been doing more planning (and by "we", I mean Nate) than actual doing. So today is a day of doing.
The foundation and footer has been roughed out by the excavator, but that's like performing surgery with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel. This is the scalpel work: digging out the trenches to the proper width and depth with a mattock. Nate and I have a disagreement in terminology over this particular implement. We were both calling it a "pickaxe" for a long time, but then I read "The Good Life" in which the Nearings refer to all the work they did with a "mattock". Not knowing what that was, I looked it up and learned that, lo and behold, we have a mattock! Who knew? So, yes, this is a mattock: one side of the head is a pickaxe, and the other is an adze. Regardless of what we call it, it is the best tool for the job, and I'm grateful that it's the one piece of practical equipment I owned before embarking on this adventure that has actually served us well.
Here's Nate working with the mattock. Notice the large rock sort of pried up with a shovel in the center of the raised part of the foundation. That's my project, which, as you can see, I had to take a break from in order to take this picture. Not easy to move, that rock. But...
I did it. I got it all the way to this Captain-infused state all by myself. This is what triumph looks like.
Nate had to help me get it into the wheelbarrow and out of the foundation; I couldn't do that part by myself. But before removing the rock, Nate had to mount it in a show of dominance as well. He looks good with no shirt and girls' sunglasses, no?
I have to hand it to Fisher Farm: they do birthdays right, and fortunately, there have been four birthdays to celebrate this summer. This one is Lauryn's.
Where is Lauryn, you might ask? Well, she's less than amped to have her picture taken, and the one picture I did take of her didn't really come out. So as a consolation prize, we have a glowstick-crowned Dennis and Jane being weird.
The farm is one of the most beautiful places I know, and on the morning of August 16th, we were treated to a light morning mist settling in the lower part of the field. As always, the soft pastels of sunrise in Maine are a treat.
And those gentle pastels translate to a spectacular view from the outhouse window. What's with this obsession with the outhouse, you might wonder. Well, again, sometimes it's the only place I get to be alone, and there really is something about engaging in one's most basic natural functions surrounded by Nature. I've reached the point at which I am truly horrified and disgusted by the very idea of flush toilets. So fortunate are we as a society that we can shit where we drink and let all that good fertilizer go to waste... Makes no sense to me.
Ever wondered what Schrödinger's cat actually looks like? Here he is, clearly having survived the experiment.
We grew just a few rows of sweet corn for farm use, and we harvested it just a few days ago. I remember playing hide and seek in the cornfield and running through the rows when I was a kid. I distinctly recall getting sliced up by sharp-edged corn leaves attempting to calm the mayhem of a screaming, running child. I recall the sting and the blood. But apparently this corn is a direct descendent of that which I terrorized as a child, and it holds a generational grudge. This is a three-day old slice from a corn leaf sustained during harvesting. It bled for a solid two days, and it was deep. No amount of super glue would hold it together. And try doing farm work sans right thumb! Probably could have used a stitch, but that's not really a DIY kind of thing for me... at least, not yet.
Injuries abound for me in farm life. That carpal tunnel thing I have going on wants ice. But who needs ice when there is ample 55 degree well water? I discovered that my hands felt substantially better during and after washing the harvest. So on the days I don't wash, I do this. Pretty great little station I've got set up there. Nice and comfy with my apple boxes and my five-gallon buckets. It's effective. Yes, I am unusually dressed up. This was just before meeting Nate's dad and stepmom, Greg and Amy, for dinner at The Bacon Tree in Winterport. This will be our first meal at their new location at the Winterport Winery.
I must report on dinner. I LOVED The Bacon Tree when it was in its quaint, charming little building. But now I feel it's gone the way of too many things: it's expanded, so its prices have gone up, and it's lost its uniqueness and charm. I mean, the food was good, and the service was good, but it's now lost what made it what it was that drew me in the first place. I must remind myself that any business I create (and there will be something; I just need to figure out what) must not get too big for its britches. I love small, personal, quaint, unique businesses. It just seems that the model is this: expansion, which requires capital --> increases in prices to pay for the investment --> less unique and personal service --> an overall lower quality experience. I don't want this to keep happening, and I see it happen everywhere -- businesses I loved when they were just starting out but grew not to love as much as they got bigger and bigger, until I ultimately stopped going and sought out some new, tiny business to support. Smaller is better, I think.
On Greg and Amy's second day here, we did some exploring. We took them to Sandy Point Beach Park in Stockton Springs, just a little ways down the road. We checked out the beach, then walked the loop trail before heading on to Belfast for dinner. Everyone who visits really wants to have lobster, which I suppose makes sense... but as someone who is allergic to shellfish, I guess I don't get it. Anyway, part of the trail is squishy, so it has this cool boardwalk made of half logs:
I believe we went to Nautilus Seafood and Grill. It was tasty, and Greg and Amy were happy with their lobster meals. We ate outside, and it was nice. And of course, we walked part of the Belfast Harbor Walk, because that's just a nice thing to do.
We spent Greg and Amy's third and final day on the land. They are our first out-of-town guests, so I suppose we need to bake them a cake (hard to do with no oven). (Lauryn and Eli were our first actual guests; they were in the area and stopped by to take a look, but we weren't there, so it counts as something, but not as our first official guests. Lauryn sent us proof:
So, back to our mystery plants. The curcubit is definitely starting to take on some pumpkin-like characteristics:
And the mystery berry thing... Well. I've been asking. I've showed pictures to lots of people, and I even took a sample back to the farm, but no one knows what it is. It could be elderberry, but probably not. It could be huckleberry, but probably not. It could be belladonna, but hopefully not. So today I decided to do the poison test. I broke open a berry and rubbed the juice on my skin. No reaction after twenty minutes. Good. So next I broke open a berry and rubbed it on my lips. No reaction after twenty minutes. Good. So I then chewed up two berries and spit them out. Not good. Not poisonous, but not good. Whatever it is, it's not so edible. It was terribly astringent, so even if it's not poisonous, I don't see myself making any pies out of it. So, nope. Whatever it is, the berries are not food.
I did that while sitting with Amy and reading. While we were being fairly useless, Nate and Greg worked on the form for the concrete. It was great to have the combination of father-and-son construction-and-engineering skills at work. I do believe that this form will be very, very close to perfect.
And then we have Mittens requiring another time-out. She looks positively adorable in this one. Don't be fooled.
We've still been attending MOFGA farm trainings, and on August 24th, we went to one on seed saving. It was really cool, and it may be something we want to look into in order to add value to our homestead. Here's my takeaway: you get to simply let things grow, with minimal care and weeding, because the whole point is to harvest the seeds. Some seeds are extraordinarily valuable, too. And from a practical perspective, it makes sense for us to save our own seeds from the things we grow and love, rather then continue to buy them year after year. Not that seeds are terribly expensive, but if the goal is to reduce dependence on others and to become as self-sustaining as possible, this is certainly a necessary step in that direction.
August 25th saw us back on the land working on our eventual foundation with it's newly-perfected concrete form. Nate does lots of the work.
But I do, too. And since Nate is in charge of documenting my contributions, this is what we get:
It's always been my money maker.
We take breaks in between house tasks to work on our wood supply. Rumor has it that we can probably get through an entire winter with two full cords, which is almost what we have here. And what's really cool is that we have yet to harvest a live tree; all this comes from deadfall that we have found or treacherous standing dead that we (Nate) have felled. An unlimited supply of free heating materials. I like it.
So. In terms of preparation for the concrete, here is where we are. We have spread some gravel in the center to bring that up to height. The goal is to have the center concrete be approximately six inches thick. We are putting stone in the footers. Today we put in one layer about four inches thick (which is a surprisingly large amount of unsurprisingly heavy stone to schlep and spread) on the east end. That got old in a hurry, so that's where we stopped for the day.
...but not without doing this first:
Chaos and disorder trouble my slightly obsessive-compulsive nature (I know. I'm in for a rough life living out in Nature. But Nature has its own sense of order despite what appears to be chaos. For whatever reason, I don't see Nature as chaotic or disordered, despite its absence of clean lines and right angles. Nature's imperfections are what makes it perfect just as it is.). These logs look much nicer to me stacked like this. They don't have to be symmetrical or perfect; I find some sort of order in this structured disorder. That log on top looks jaunty to me. It would look great with a monocle and a top hat.
My dear Maine morning sky, you never disappoint me. Thank you for continuing to fill the start of my every day with a sense of silent awe, wonder and gratitude.
August 28th saw more work on the foundation. Not just more work, but most of the work. Here it is filled with stone and gravel. In this panoramic shot, you can see pretty much everything from north to south, including the grey water pit (north), the eventual crop fields (east), and driveway and woodshed (south). We're not done yet.
We are, however, just about done with the wood-splitting thing for a while. Here's what we have going into our first winter. There's nothing else nearby or easily accessible that requires immediate chopping up, so the rest of our efforts this season will probably be dedicated to work on the house.
And mystery plant number one is now solved: it is, indeed, a pumpkin. And if you look closely, you can see its little orange friends hiding in the leaves. Super cool that our compost pile doubles as a vegetable garden. Even though I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work. We were trying to figure out how a pumpkin got in there. I surmise it's from the seeds from last year's Halloween pumpkins that we carved in Johnson City. Yes, we brought our compost up from New York. Seemed silly to waste it, and it wasn't going to amount to anything there.
I finally got a tractor project! I never got to use the tractor to do anything with actual vegetable production, since Lauryn gets to do almost all of that (which makes sense from a business perspective; it's more efficient to assign those tasks to the second-year apprentice who already knows how to do them expertly than it is to train the first-year apprentices. Fortunately, I think Nate has gotten to do some tractor work, so he has the skills I lack. It's not like I'm the world's greatest driver anyway...). But let me tell you, I can mow like a fiend! Check out my before and after pictures:
That was a two-day project, but I got it done. Tractor work is boring but soothing. Relaxing but scary. I realize it doesn't look like much, but there is a little bit of a side hill there that forced me to face my fears. It's very satisfying; I like projects that have an immediate visual measure of progress. The other thing about tractor work is that it always requires a shower, yes, even every day when a tractor is involved. The tractor is hot, so even if the weather isn't hot (which it is), there is sweat. Mowing grass is dusty, and lots of bugs like to pop up out of it and join in with the dust. Sweat + dust = shower. And that's all there is to it.
So we ended our August with showers on consecutive days and a MOFGA farm training on sheep butchering. My takeaway from that? Someone else can butcher my sheep for me. If I ever have sheep to butcher, that is.
Namaste, Maine. Here's to a great September!
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